Agricultural Machinery

Before the late eighteenth century, farmers tilled their fields with wooden moldboard plows. In order to prevent the moldboard from wearing out quickly, plowrights or blacksmiths plated it with thin iron strips. Wooden moldboard plows could not be mass-produced or repaired easily because they did not have standardized designs or parts.

Only iron, which could be cast, wrought, or molded, would enable consistent duplication of plows specifically designed for a variety of soils. In 1807, David Peacock, a New Jersey inventor, patented the first successful plow with a cast-iron moldboard and a wrought-iron, steel-edged share that made the plow easy to repair. The concept of standardized, replaceable parts for the manufacturing of plows, however, is usually credited to Jethro Wood of Scipio, New York. In 1814, Wood patented a plow with replaceable parts. Wood's plow probably did more to replace the wooden moldboard plows than any other design, and farmers quickly adopted it. After Wood's invention, plow technology, design, and manufacturing changed little until 1837, when John Deere of Grand Detour, Illinois, made a plow to cut through the thick sod and heavy prairie soil. Deere's plow had a highly polished wrought-iron moldboard and a steel share, and it required only half the draft power of other plows. Deere's plow became known as the "singing plow," because it produced a whine or hum as it cut through the soil. During the late 1870s, large-scale wheat farmers in California and the Red River Valley of North Dakota began using two-bottom sulky or riding plows. These plows enabled a farmer to turn from five to seven acres per day, compared to one acre per day with a one-horse walking plow, but four or five horses were required for draft power. Plows with more than four moldboards remained impractical until the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when steam-or gasoline-powered tractors could provide the necessary force to pull them through the soil.

Farmers usually seeded their crops by hand. In 1841, however, Moses and Samuel Pennock of Chester, County Pennsylvania, designed a grain drill that deposited seeds through tubes attached to a box. By the mid-1860s, farmers that raised small grains commonly used the grain drill. Farmers typically used a dibble stick or hoe to plant their corn crop by hand. In 1864, however, John Thompson and John Ramsay of Aledo, Illinois, developed a corn planter that dropped seeds at designated spots in the furrows through a tube that extended to a hopper. This implement became known as a check-row planter, because it planted evenly spaced seed that permitted cultivation of the crop from four directions. The check-row planter became the standard corn-planting implement until it was replaced by drills in the twentieth century.

Until the development of the reaper, farmers cut their small grain crops with a sickle or scythe, permitting them to harvest just three acres per day. In 1831, Cyrus Hall McCormick tested a reaper in Rockbridge County, Virginia. McCormick improved his reaper by adding a reel to collect the stalks uniformly before the cutter bar, but he did not market it until 1840. In 1833, Obed Hussey tested his reaper in Hamilton County, Ohio. Instead of a reel, Hussey's machine used a reciprocating sickle with large triangular teeth that cut through the stalks. Hussey and McCormick continued to improve their reapers while other inventors developed similar implements. By 1855, wheat farmers commonly used the reaper to harvest grain. By the mid-1860s, reapers had a self-raking mechanism to clear the cut grain from the platform for the oncoming binders.

During the 1850s, inventors worked to develop a machine that would bind sheaves of small grains into bundles. In 1856, C. A. McPhitrigde of St. Louis, Missouri, patented the first machine to bind grain with wire. This machine had a mechanism that wrapped wire around the gavel of cut grain and deposited the bundle of the ground ready for shocking. By the mid-1870s, the binder had become popular among grain farmers, but the wire was expensive, heavy, and difficult to dispose. During the mid-1870s John Appleby gave his attention to developing a twine binder. As early as 1857 he worked on a device that wrapped twine around a bundle of grain and tied a knot. He solved this technical problem about 1874 or 1875 and, in 1878, Parker & Stone of Beloit, Wisconsin, built four binders with Appleby's knotter. By 1880, the twine binders were rapidly replacing wire binders. Twine binders would remain the primary implement for harvesting small grain crops until farmers began replacing these machines with combines during the 1920s. Reapers and binders enabled farmers to harvest from twelve to fifteen acres per day.

Threshing machines date from 1791, when Samuel Mulliken, a Philadelphia inventor, patented the first implement. Yet, it was not until the 1820s that workable, hand-and horse-powered threshing machines were developed. Jacob Pope, a Boston inventor, built the most popular threshing machine. This hand-powered machine only separated the grain from the heads as the operator fed the stalks into the revolving threshing cylinder. Pope's threshing machine did not remove the straw or winnow the chaff. By the early 1830s, horse-powered sweeps and treadmills drove the working parts of threshing machines and enabled farmers to thresh more grain with less labor. In 1837, Hiram A. and John A. Pitts of Winthrop, Maine, patented a threshing machine that separated the grain, removed the straw, and winnowed the chaff in one operation. This machine could thresh about 100 bushels per day. By the 1850s, farmers who raised small grains commonly used threshing machines.

In 1831, Hiram Moore, with the aid of John Hascall in Kalamazoo County, Michigan, tested the first successful machine to harvest and thresh small grain crops in one operation. By 1843, Moore believed that he had developed a practical combined harvesting and threshing machine, but it was too large and expensive for small-scale grain farmers. The development of the combine came during the 1870s at the hands of David Young and John C. Holt of Stockton, California. Although one day it would become a major improvement, no one produced the combine on a large scale until the organization of the Stockton Combined Harvester and Agricultural Works in 1884. The large-scale wheat farms and dry conditions in California proved ideal for combine harvesting. The working parts of the combine were powered by steam, oil, and, by 1904, gasoline engines, while teams of twenty or more horses or mules pulled it through the fields. The largest of these machines could cut 100 acres and thresh 2,500 bushels of wheat per day. Smaller combines pulled by gasoline-powered tractors with power-take-off mechanisms that drove the machine's gears helped make this implement popular in the Midwest by the late 1930s.

Prior to the mid-nineteenth century, horses, mules, or oxen provided the power to operate the tillage, planting, harvesting, and threshing machinery. In 1849, A. L. Archambault of Philadelphia manufactured the first mobile or portable steam engine. By the Civil War several dozen agricultural manufacturing companies built steam engines, all designed for belt work, that is, to power farm implements such as threshing machines, but steam engines were not used on a widespread basis until the 1870s. These steam engines, however, were not self-propelled and farmers used horses to pull them from place to place. In 1873, the firm of Merritt and Kellogg of Battle Creek, Michigan, marketed the first traction steam engine. During the late 1870s, manufacturers also began producing steam traction engines that could pull a plow. By the 1890s, large traction steam engines easily plowed forty-five acres per day in the wheat lands of the West. These steam engines, however, were too large and expensive for the small-scale farmers, and their popularity peaked about 1915, when gasoline-powered tractors began replacing them for plowing and threshing.

During the early twentieth century, farm machinery companies began building gasoline tractors. The Hart-Parr Company of Charles City, Iowa, built a popular tractor, but the early designs were too large, heavy, and expensive for small-scale farmers. Gasoline-powered tractors did not become practical until Henry Ford offered the Fordson for sale in 1918. Farmers could use this lightweight, low-cost, two-plow tractor for tillage and threshing, but its four-wheel design made the cultivation of row crops difficult. In 1924, the International Harvester Company produced a small, low-priced tractor with a tricycle design, the Farmall, which enabled farmers to cultivate row crops without crushing the plants. By the mid-1920s, the Fordson and Farmall had relegated the steam tractors to the past. By the late 1930s, a farmer could plow an acre in about thirty minutes, but it took nearly two hours with a horse and plow. By 1955, tractors exceeded the number of horses on farms.

While the tractor became the most important agricultural machine nationwide, the mechanical cotton picker became the most important farm machine on a regional basis during the twentieth century. Although the first mechanical cotton picker received a patent in 1850, the International Harvester Company did not develop a successful mechanical picker until 1942, and quantity production did not begin until 1948. The success of this spindle picker, however, required changes in the cotton plant so that it would ripen uniformly and produce bolls in clusters for easier picking by the machine. By 1975, the mechanical picker had mechanized the cotton harvest.

Agricultural machinery has enabled farmers to conduct more work with less labor, and convert fields used to feed horses to cropland for food and fiber for human consumption. Agricultural machines also enabled farmers to work more land and contributed to the consolidation of farms and the decline of the agricultural population. The tractor and the cotton picker helped end sharecropping in the South, while the threshing machine and combine, used for both wheat and corn, let farmers expand their operations. Although agricultural machines helped remove many farm men, women, and children from the land because they were not needed for agricultural production or could not afford the implements or the land to operate them efficiently, overall, agricultural machines have helped farmers increase production, eased their labor, and improved the quality of farm life.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Holley, Donald. The Second Great Emancipation: The Mechanical Cotton Picker, Black Migration, and How They Shaped the Modern South. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2000.

Hurt, R. Douglas. American Agriculture: A Brief History. Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1994. Revised edition, West Lafayette, Ind.: Purdue University Press, 2002.

McClelland, Peter D. Sowing Modernity: America's First Agricultural Revolution. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1997.

Williams, Robert C. Fordson, Farmall, and Poppin' Johnny: A History of the Farm Tractor and Its Impact on America. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987.

R. DouglasHurt